Wednesday, March 22, 2006

ETA ceasefire

It has been announced before, most recently in 1998, and it didn't last. But this ceasefire announcement looks like it may set the political ball rolling in interesting new directions. Let's hope. A sticking point, of course, is that the Basque Country straddles the border between Spain and France. Thus far it appears that this is all mainly a Spanish initiative.
The Basque separatist group ETA announced a permanent cease-fire Wednesday in its nearly four-decade fight for independence in northern Spain and southwestern France, according to a communique the group issued to Basque news media outlets.

The separatist organization said the cease-fire would begin Friday and its objective now will be "to start a new democratic process in the Basque country."...

If the truce holds, it could lead to talks with the two-year-old minority government of Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero Rodríguez, which has favored the concept of regional autonomy, in sharp contrast to its conservative predecessors. His government depends on the support of small regional parties in parliament.

UPDATE:

See this interesting blog, Euskal Blog, for a Basque nationalist point of view, especially important since there's hardly any Basque perspective in the US media.

3 comments:

L'Amerloque said...

Hi !

From what the media have said here (in France), since Sarkozy took over at the Ministry of the Interior, the ETA crowd has been somewhat eviscerated on this side of the Pyrenées.

Too, remember that old Russian proverb: "When four sit down to talk revolution, three are fools and one is a police spy." (smile)

Best,
L'Amerloque

helmut said...

I've been hearing about how Sarkozy is cracking down on crime, with mixed results and with heavy criticism from some quarters. I don't know at all about the role of Sarkozy in eliminating the French ETA.

Aleksu said...

Funny how no one mentions the failure of the right wing neo-Francoist government in Madrid as a reason for ETA to renounce to their last cease fire.